Tag Archives: light

After fixing the aquarium with two philips CFLs (PL-L 36W/865/4P), doing some more research on what kind of light is best for aquarium plants – i mean not in terms of lux or brightness but in terms of light temperature i.e. cool, red, blue what ?

Based on some initial research on the internet found that : Chlorophyll does not absorb all the wavelengths of visible light equally, light absorption is maximum at 430 and 662 nm. This means that lights which have peaks in their output color spectrum around this range are the most efficient for plant growth.

Lets review the light spectrum for lamps that i put in :-

There are two small peaks around 430 and 662 nm but the largest one is around 550 nm which is not going to be that useful. Let me do some more digging around and see what comes up…

Having setup a planted aquarium and finding that my plants were not doing too well inspite of having 03 CFLs in an 80 liter tank, i realised there must be something fundamentally wrong. Assuming that the light was sufficient, I set out of check the substrate, fertilizer etc etc. When those did not help either, came back to the fundamental question on light. Wearing out my finger hitting the Google search button on the internet and after reviewing many article on the subject, I thought i would share the result of my research on Aquarium lighting for Planted Aquariums which may benefit others struggling like myself.